


the harder you fall

by petalloso



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Flight attendant AU, M/M, also bc the au just works so well with them trust me on this, bc i'm a self indulgent college student pls let me live
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2018-12-26 22:01:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12067818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalloso/pseuds/petalloso
Summary: “The chances of dying on a plane are slim to none,” Neil says casually. “But if it were to crash, you’d be unconscious in a second, and probably dead before we hit the ground.”Andrew stares at him, mildly baffled. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”





	1. i

**Author's Note:**

> ngl i spent way too much time writing this for how mediocre it turned out but /shrug emoji/ i hope ya'll still enjoy it bc i had fun writing it and also i love u 
> 
> also i hope u don't mind but i am going to take this opportunity to vent bc i can't stop doing that to everyone who will listen (or read unwillingly) and i want to say that college is hard and i feel like crying a lot and making frnds is hard bc i'm a loner but that it's getting better slowly and i really am v grateful to have the ability to even get a higher education but everything is still v hard and writing this was therapeutic in a way (as in i wrote it instead of doing work but uk) 
> 
> i read so much about flight attending pls be nice to ur flight attendants everyone their jobs are Hard af

“Excuse me,” someone says through the blast of music in his ears, prompting Andrew to look up from where he’d very pointedly been staring at the back of the seat in front of him. It wasn’t particularly interesting, but he still would have liked to remain uninterrupted.

The interrupter in question is a flight attendant, dressed in a crisp blue suit with a light blue collared shirt underneath, an unused handkerchief tucked neatly into his breast pocket. Andrew takes a second to appreciate the fit of the uniform, how much better it seems to look on him than any other flight attendant that’s walked past his seat, and then he looks up and meets the man’s gaze with a silent question of “what?”, as polite as he can given his natural disposition.

“Could you please remove your headphones for takeoff?” The man says, and then smiles, the fakest thing Andrew has seen in his life.

He says nothing, but removes them as told, wrapping the ends around two fingers to keep them from tangling. “Thank you,” the attendant says with a polite nod, and then moves on. Andrew presses the back of his head to his headrest, keeping it still but letting his eyes follow the attendant down the aisle, watch the way he cranes his neck over each seat to ensure each passenger has their seatbelt fastened, and then reach overhead to close any opened overhead lockers.

He’s remarkably short, and Andrew distractedly wonders if there’s some kind of height requirement for his job, because he’s basically on his tiptoes to reach and fasten the lockers. He dismisses the thought as irrelevant though, leans back in his chair before remembering something about no reclining until after takeoff, and pulls the seat back upright, intent on having as minimal contact with concerned flight attendants as possible, even if one said flight attendant had a pleasant face to look at and wore a suit that complimented the color of his eyes more than should technically be possible.

He closes his eyes instead, the white noise of the plane’s rumbling engine drowning out the anxiety pooling in the pit of his stomach, and clutches lightly at the sides of his seat as the plane enters taxi, taking far too long to speed up on the runway and finally lift of the ground with a slight lurch that sends his stomach fluttering violently. He keeps his eyes closed. Like that will do anything.

He doesn’t know how long he stays like that, trying and only mildly succeeding in pretending he isn’t what feels like a trillion miles above safe ground, but it must be a good while, because the next thing he knows there’s a voice speaking next to him, interrupting his thoughts. Again.

“Sir,” he says, and Andrew opens his eyes, peering at the same attendant from earlier, who’s pushed a cart down the aisle and is standing beside his seat, looking politely expectant.

“Hm?” Andrew says.

“What would you like to drink?”

“Water is fine,” Andrew says, and watches the attendant swiftly grab a water bottle, untwist the cap, and pour a cup full, hands quick and practiced. And scarred.

Andrew isn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed before. A web of knotted skin threads itself across the man’s knuckles, twist around his long, slender fingers and travel upwards to his wrists before disappearing beneath the cuffs of his shirt. They look painful, deep, and as healed as they will ever be, meaning they’re at least several years old by now. Andrew flicks his gaze away quickly though, knowing the feeling himself of being stared at and ogled by strangers. The man doesn’t seem to notice his gaze anyhow.

Andrew notices he’s careful not to brush his fingers when passing him the water. He leans over and flips Andrew’s tray down, places a napkin and a bag of mini pretzels on top, smiles that fake smile at Andrew again, the one that makes Andrew, strangely and disconcertingly, want to see what a real smile might look like on him, and then moves on to the next seat.

Andrew takes a sip from his water. The plane lurches slightly, spilling some over his fingers and erupting a swarm of butterflies in the pit of his stomach, and in hindsight, Andrew thinks he probably should have asked for something with alcohol.

+

“This is your captain speaking,” a far too cheerful voice speaks over the intercom. “It looks like we’ll be experiencing some unexpected turbulence. For your safety please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened.”

 _Fuck turbulence,_ Andrew thinks absently, fidgeting with the belt strap in an attempt to tighten it, just as the plane lurches for the fourth time in five minutes, and really that announcement was old news, came a little too late to do any good. He curses softly and adjusts himself in the seat.

Andrew looks over his armrest and spots the attendant, walking up towards his direction, a little unsteady on his feet but clearly practiced in surviving the path down the aisles of turbulence-ridden airplanes. He sways when the plane does, fingers resting on an armrest briefly before he balances once again, continuing down the aisle.

Andrew means to look away as he gets closer, but somehow he finds himself doing the opposite. The attendant catches his gaze, not smiling, but with something soft in his expression. It should make him uncomfortable really, this stranger’s notice, but it doesn’t. Instead Andrew leans slightly over as he walks by him, wonders if he imagines how he lingers right beside his seat for a moment like he wants to say something, before passing and disappearing into the front of the plane.

Andrew closes his eyes, folds his hands neatly into his lap, and tries again to imagine he’s on the ground, not in a plane a thousand feet off the ground.

 

The turbulence is short-lived, though still too long for Andrew’s liking. It stops after ten minutes, at which point Andrew has twisted around in his seat to stretch his aching legs into the aisle, flipped back and forth between the same two pages of a magazine for way too long, and stared out the tiny oval window to watch whatever clouds he can see in the darkening sky. Objectively, he can appreciate them, how fluffy they are, almost like you could put a hand through and be met with only softness, maybe take a nap on top.

A nap sounds good, Andrew thinks, just as the aisle lights dim, leaving the plane in relative darkness and signaling it’s time for passengers to get in as much sleep as possible in their cramped seats. Andrew grabs the provided pillow, which is so flat it would do about as much cushioning as a napkin, but nonetheless shoves it behind his head. He knows he won’t be able to sleep, but he could at least get into the pretense of it.

Just as he’s about to close his eyes again, he spots the attendant walking down the aisle again, looking as fresh and put together as ever, more so than should be acceptable on a fourteen hour flight. He stops by every few seats to give personal attendance to a passenger with that cheery fake smile of his.

Andrew doesn’t expect him to stop by his seat though. He’s not pushing a cart, and Andrew is pretty certain he never hit the call button, although looking at the man now he thinks maybe he should more often just for the sake of it. He still looks professional in his crisp suit, but his mop of auburn hair is disheveled, his eyes glowing in the unlit aisles of the plane, so impossibly bright, and really Andrew thinks there should be some kind of regulation for attendants to look like _this._ It was distracting.

“Hey,” he says, the casualness of it seeming a little unprofessional. What’s even more is the way he flops down on the vacant seat beside Andrew, sighing heavily and glancing at Andrew. “Can I sleep here?”

Andrew stares at him. “What?” Is all he manages to get out.

“The cots are taken,” he says, like that explains anything.

“And?”

“And I’m really tired.”

Andrew frowns. “Doesn’t this entire interaction breach some kind of customer service protocol?”

The attendant frowns back, and then wiggles around in his stolen seat, trying to make himself comfortable, which tells Andrew that whatever his answer is going to be, it isn’t one that will lead him to getting up and leaving him alone.

“I don’t really think you care,” he says finally.

“I’ll file a complaint,” Andrew says. And he doesn’t lie, but this feels more like banter than anything, so he decides it doesn’t count and nudges the guy’s foot with his own.

But the attendant only smirks lightly at him, and even though it’s not the smile Andrew had been wondering about, it’s still kind of annoyingly breathtaking in a way that makes Andrew want to punch something but also makes him forget where the swarm of violent butterflies in his stomach are _really_ from.

“Okay,” he says simply. “Are you using that?” He points to Andrew’s blanket, still wrapped, and when Andrew doesn’t answer, grabs it off the floor and unwraps it himself before draping it over himself and also Andrew, careful again not to touch him. Then he closes his eyes, leans back, and, apparently, goes to sleep.

Andrew stares at his profile for a minute in mild bafflement. The entire situation really does seem like something that could get the guy fired, if Andrew said anything, but there are shadows beneath his closed eyes even in the dark, long lashes tickling the dark purple of them, and he’s breathing evenly like he’s already fallen asleep in the thirty seconds that Andrew has been staring at him. He’s kind of frowning, mouth quirked downward and a crease forming between his brows, knees tucked up to his chest and arms hugging himself in the tiny seat, because he’s tinier than even Andrew, easily fitting in that position.

And then Andrew looks away, because he’s been looking for too long and doesn’t like the feeling that comes from it. He doesn’t sleep, not because he doesn’t want to, not because of the man sleeping beside him, because for some reason he finds the tension in his body eases some with him asleep beside Andrew, but because he’s a thousand godforsaken miles off the ground, or more like seven if he went by his google search results, which is besides the point really, because the image of it won’t leave his mind until his feet are on solid ground again. So he closes his eyes instead, and pretends the in between of awake and asleep is enough to feel rested, when it’s really only barely.

 

The guy doesn’t sleep very well. He keeps mumbling words Andrew can’t quite make out, though some are very distinctly not English, keeps squirming around like he can’t get comfortable, which is very likely given they’re seated in economy class, or more like sardine class, the seats squished together too tightly.

Eventually he wakes, slowly, blinking in the darkness and looking over at Andrew, hair disheveled, mouth parted.

“How long’s it been?”

“Like an hour.”

“My break’s up,” he says, more to himself than to Andrew, and gets up from his seat, Andrew’s seat technically, because he’s the one who paid extra for it to keep anyone from sitting beside him, a plan that has gone awry and washed six hundred bucks down the drain the moment he’d let this guy take it. He can’t bring himself to care, though. He looked at least a little more rested.

“Thanks for the seat,” he tells him with a smile, the most genuine Andrew has seen yet. Andrew kind of hates it, more for the way it makes him feel than anything.

“What’s your name?” Andrew asks, because he isn’t about to skirt around a proper introduction and he figures an answer is well deserved by now.

The man looks at him, hands stilling where he’d been straightening his shirt and suit jacket, something like curiosity and maybe mirth in his expression when he looks at Andrew. Andrew bristles underneath his gaze, but he doesn’t feel the itch of discomfort and paranoia that usually comes with being looked at.

“Neil,” the man, Neil says finally. “It’s Neil,” he says again, like he wants to fill in the silence, or like he wants to emphasize his answer.

“Neil,” Andrew says, testing the name and liking the way it sounds, rolling naturally off his tongue. Neil watches him like he’s trying to solve a complicated math problem.

“What’s yours?” He asks finally.

“Andrew,” he tells him, too quickly, but it’s not like he can take it back.

“Andrew,” Neil says, and then smiles again. Andrew wonders if it’s effect will ever lessen, wonders if he should hope for it to or not. “I like that. It fits you.”

Andrew almost laughs at that. He’s not entirely sure why the urge comes, but it just seems such a stupid thing for him to say, something to fill in a dying conversation, except it’s not. Neil looks like he really means it, and somehow all Andrew can think to respond with is a nod and a tilt of his head in silent question. He doesn’t even know what he’s asking.

Neil leaves him hanging though, with a sweet smile and strange wave of his fingers, walks down the aisle, still fixing his crinkled jacket and with an energy to his step Andrew is pretty sure wasn’t there before, not that he’d been watching, not that he’d been paying attention at all.

+

The second time Neil sits beside him he doesn’t even ask before flopping down onto the seat with a heavy sigh, tugging at the ends of his cuffs like they annoy him and then sinking into the seat like he’s made of jelly. Andrew says nothing, only watches him make himself comfortable with a raised eyebrow, magazine folded out in front of him but words long forgotten. He hadn’t even bothered to turn on the overhead light. His eyes kind of hurt.

“Ugh,” Neil says, squeezing his eyes shut. He doesn’t elaborate on this, and after a while Andrew grows impatient with the prolonged silence, enough to disrupt it.

“What?”

Neil opens a single eye and peeks at him from the side, smiling when he meets his gaze. “They taught us during training that the passengers are always right. But I’ve told this dude maybe eight hundred times that he can’t do planks in the aisle, safety hazard and all that, and he keeps telling me his abs will liquidate if he doesn’t. Liquidate.” Neil laughs tiredly. “It’s one in the morning. Why can’t he just sleep like the rest of them?”

Andrew watches Neil massage his wrists like they hurt, then turn to him, head resting low on the seat because he’s so slouched, making him look even smaller than he already is. He has the sudden urge to ask him how he got hired since he’s so short, but then he thinks it might come off a little too rude for so soon into their strange relationship, so he opts to not.

“How is _your_ flight going?” Neil asks, and it sounds like a typical question, something he might ask any other passenger without actually caring for an answer, except for the way he says it, and the way he looks at Andrew with rapt, almost comical attention.

“Well,” Andrew starts. “There’s this one flight attendant that won’t leave me alone, so I’d say it’s pretty mediocre so far. I won’t be booking with the airline again.”

Neil smirks, tilts his head to the side and presses a thumb down on a large scar on his right wrist, a habit Andrew immediately recognizes as one of his own. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” he says, laughter in his voice.

“I don’t think you are.”

“No, really,” Neil insists. “What can we do to make your flight more comfortable? Your utmost satisfaction is important to us.”

Andrew is tempted to tell him to get out of his space, maybe bring him back a drink or a first class dinner, but he’s pretty sure if he did ask Neil actually would leave, and that’s not what he wants.

“Distract me,” he settles on instead. Neil’s brows pinch together, like the request is not entirely what he expected. It’s not what Andrew expected either, so he decides to sympathize. Neil’s expression quickly softens, his smile stretching into something a little more mirthful.

“I can do that,” he declares. “You want to hear some wild stories from the life of a flight attendant?”

“Spill,” Andrew says.

 

 _Wild,_ Andrew will think later, is really an understatement. Apparently Neil has been witness to some grotesque, disturbing, unhygienic, and generally all around gross encounters. It’s entertaining, though more in a morbid sense than anything.

“I was walking down the aisle, just checking seatbelts and all that, when I saw some lady changing her kid’s diaper on the pull out tray, but I had no idea what to say so I just pretended I hadn’t seen it. That was a mistake, though. She left the dirty diaper on her seat when she got off the plane.”

“Gross,” Andrew says genuinely. He doesn’t wrinkle his nose like Neil does, but comes close to it.

“One time, this lady in coach called me over and was like ‘this soup is cold.’ So naturally I was concerned and sympathetic, because I care about our passengers so very much, and I’m about to take it away and get her something else, apologizing to her the whole time, when I look down and realize. And I just put it back on her tray and tell her, ‘ma’am, this is yogurt.”

Andrew can’t fathom how someone could mistake yogurt for soup, but it doesn’t really surprise him that there are people in this world who would. “Wow,” is all he says, because there’s not much else to. Neil nods solemnly, looking like he wants to cry and laugh at the same time.

“That’s nothing, honestly. Once this kid got up in his seat and put his feet on the ceiling so he could stretch his legs. Or this family that hung their underwear over the seats to dry. Why would you do that?” Neil asks, baffled, and goes on.

“We once had to fedex this old lady her dentures because she left them in the bathroom and insisted she needed them for thanksgiving dinner. And there was this couple once, really young, maybe twenty something, that went into the bathroom for almost fifteen minutes. The girl came out later, crying her eyes out and saying something about her boyfriend, but we couldn’t understand her. And then she went back into the bathroom, and we could hear them, you know, going at it, so we knocked on the door to get them out because it’s really not safe to have sex in the lavatory, and it’s so tiny why would you even want to… but anyway, turns out they were both on ecstasy.”

“Wow,” Andrew says again. He thinks he should probably think of a more unique response, but Neil seems satisfied enough with it, humming in acknowledgement. He muses on the end of his story for a little while, playing with his fingers absentmindedly.

“And the things people have asked for,” he says, trailing off.

“Like what?”

“Well,” Neil starts, hand on his chin like he’s in deep thought. “Deep fried chicken, a screwdriver, so he could, and I quote, ‘take the seat apart.’ One guy told me he needed to masturbate, so I pointed him to the lavatory. Mm, my number, a few times.”

Neil flushes slightly like that embarresses him and laughs lightly. It’s such an innocent reaction, like a kid’s, that Andrew is taken aback for a second. He thinks absently that the rosy tint of his cheeks is a pretty color on him, but squashes the thought down quickly.

“What do you tell them,” Andrew says, “when they ask?”

Neil smiles. “I tell them that I’m taken.”

Andrew doesn’t know why he keeps asking, why he cares, but he does.

“Are you?”

“No,” Neil says easily. “I’m just not interested.”

“Not interested,” Andrew repeats, because he’s not sure he understands what Neil is trying to say.

Neil hums. “Well, maybe that’s not exactly it. I’m curious, but I’ve never met someone who made me want to try, you know?”

“No,” Andrew answer honestly.

Neil laughs. “Me neither.”

Andrew says nothing, mostly because he’s not sure what to and doesn’t want to make this awkward. He likes listening to Neil. He doesn’t even really know him, but he feels like he does, and the quick way that Neil has bridged that gap is scary and unprecedented and new, something no one has ever managed to do before, something Andrew hasn’t ever let anyone try. He feels like he knows Neil from somewhere, even though he’s sure if he’d met him before he would have remembered. He wouldn’t have been able to forget.

“Hey,” Neil says quietly, like he’s tiptoeing. “Can I ask you something?”

“Okay,” Andrew says.

“Why did you book two seats?”

For a second Andrew is surprised. His natural paranoia has him drawing away. “How do you know I bought both?” He asks.

Neil leans over and tugs out two plane boarding tickets from the seat pocket in front of Andrew, both in his name. That’s when Andrew realizes Neil is perceptive, in a way that most people aren’t. No one would have paid attention to those tickets. No one would have read his name. Andrew watches him place them in his lap, and then sighs quietly.

“I don’t like people close to me,” he says.

“Oh,” Neil says, and then bites his lip. The expression that flickers across his face is one of guilt, and he tries to get up, only for Andrew to tap two fingers to his wrist, right where he himself had been touching, because despite himself he finds that he wants Neil nearby, talking to him like they’ve known each other longer than a fourteen hour plane flight halfway through, because it feels like they have.

“Not you,” he says.

“Oh,” Neil says again, and then smiles, the real one that Andrew is beginning to fall for more than he wants to, more than he should allow himself to, and this is so stupid, all of it, knowing someone for a few hours and feeling this kind of way, but he’s a careful person at worst. He trusts himself. And he trusts himself to trust Neil, tentatively, but willingly.

“Just in case though,” Neil says. “What else don’t you like?”

“Heights,” Andrew says impassively.

Neil hums and leans over Andrew’s lap to glance out the window. It’s not invasive like Andrew thought it’d be. He doesn’t even touch him, and quickly leans back to settle in his seat again.

“The chances of dying on a plane are slim to none, really,” he says casually. “But if it were to crash, you’d be unconscious in a second, and probably dead before we hit the ground.” Neil pauses, looking deep in thought, and then he rests an elbow on his armrest, props his chin in the palm of his hand, and looks at Andrew. “For instance, if a hole was ripped into the plane, the pressure difference would come rushing at your body so fast that it’d tear you apart. But it’d be quick and very painless, most likely.”

Andrew stares at him, mildly baffled. He has the strangest urge to flick him in the forehead, but resists the temptation. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Neil shrugs, tries and fails to stop the smile from blooming onto his face. “I have a feeling you like honesty.”

Andrew hums acknowledgement and looks away from Neil, whose smile is grating on his nerves, though not necessarily in a bad way. It just kind of makes him feel like he’s falling.

“I do.”

 

Listening to Neil speak hypothetically about what sorts of supplies he’d salvage from a crash landing to survive on a deserted island shouldn’t ease the tight bundle of nerves knotted in his stomach, but somehow it does. So Andrew listens, and listens and listens, until his eyes flutter open and closed and a warmth spreads over him.

“Hey,” Neil says, too soft, so soft Andrew kind of hates it. “You can sleep. I promise I’ll wake you if we’re plummeting to our deaths.”

And Andrew doesn’t really want to. He’d much rather listen to Neil’s voice go on and on about starting a fire with a stick and some wet leaves, stripping the plane for spare parts and rationing the limited food supply, and it doesn’t go over Andrew’s head that everything he talks about is for _two_ people, but all he manages to do is grumble something that sounds vaguely like “shut up,” with the least amount of bite he’s ever put into the words, and then fall asleep.

+

“Andrew,” someone says softly. The voice sounds far away, but it slips into his dreams anyway, morphing it’s image. “Andrew, wake up.”

Andrew stirs and squints his eyes open. Neil is peering at him, standing in the aisle and probably back on duty given his pristine appearance. “Morning, sunshine,” he says, grins like it’s the funniest thing ever when it very much is not. Andrew glares at him, but there’s not much heat behind it.

“It’s not morning,” he says, because his body clock isn’t the greatest but he’s pretty sure he hasn’t been asleep for more than a couple hours.

“Actually, it is,” Neil says. “Time zones, remember? It’s nine in the morning in Tokyo.”

Andrew frowns, runs a hand over his face and rubs away the sleep in his eyes, ignoring Neil’s light laugh from beside him. “Right,” he says distractedly.

The intercom overhead beeps and the captain’s familiar voice speaks over it, calm and collected like his next words don’t send an unpleasant spike of anxiety through Andrew’s entire body. “A slight malfunction with our landing gear has delayed our landing time slightly. Please remain seated.”

“Don’t worry,” Neil says quickly, likely realizing what sort of feeling Andrew is experiencing right about now after Andrew had stupidly and willingly told him about his fear of heights. “They’re just saying that so overtime will kick in. There’s nothing actually wrong with the landing gear.”

“You flight attendants are the most unprofessional workers I’ve ever seen,” Andrew grumbles, getting comfortable in his seat and folding the blanket in his lap. That had not been there when he’d fallen asleep, he knows. Neil says nothing in regards to it, though.

“No, that’s just me,” Neil says like he’s proud of it, leans over to press the button on Andrew’s armrest so his chair will recline back to regular position. “Safe landing, Andrew,” he says, smiles and then walks away.  

 

Only when Andrew is already off the plane, lugging his suitcase behind him, does he realize he forgot to ask Neil if he could see him again.

+

“Fuck,” Andrew mumbles to himself. “What do you mean my name isn’t listed?”

“I’m sorry, sir. It seems your company hasn’t booked you a room. We can go ahead and clear one out for you, but it will be several hours before it will be ready.”

“It’s midnight,” Andrew says, meaning he wants to go the fuck to sleep, meaning the last thing he wants to do is wait around in a lobby with shoddy wifi after a long day’s work in a city he barely knows for a bed to sleep in.

“Yes, sir. There’s a bar on the top floor if you’d like to remain there while you wait. We can provide free drinks and service.”

Andrew sighs, presses a palm to his open passport and slides it across the counter back to him before slipping it back into his pocket. “Fine,” he says, because what other choice does he have really, and at least this way he can score a few free drinks out of his shitty company’s stupid mistake. 

Andrew takes the elevator up, provided with a free key-pass because this is kind of hotel where you need one even for the elevator, staring at himself in the mirror on the way up. He looks kind of awful, like he hasn’t slept in forty two hours, which he hasn’t, besides that one hour on the plane after Neil’s nagging for him to. His hair is cropped short but messy anyhow, suit rustled and eyes hooded, dark shadows prominent underneath. He runs a hand through his hair and sighs, ragged and tired. Why, he wonders. Why what? He doesn’t even know. He just wants a bed to sleep in.

Andrew drags his suitcase to the corner of the bar and tucks it beneath his seat, lifting a hand to get the bartender’s attention and telling him his drink. The man nods once, and brings it quickly enough, slapping a coaster down in front of him and then the drink atop, its contents sloshing against the rim. Andrew takes a sip, turns to glance to his right, and almost chokes on it.

Because there is Neil, looking quite different from the flight attendant Andrew had met him as, perched on a stool so high his feet don’t even reach the ground, and really Andrew should ask him about the height requirement, except he doesn’t want to be called out for hypocrisy.

He looks just a bit tipsy, his cheeks faintly flushed, his mouth stretched into an easy, happy smile, hand clenching the glass in front of him. Andrew wouldn’t recognize him in the simple white long-sleeved shirt and ripped black skinny jeans he dons, if not for the shock of red hair and how he is somehow prettier now than he ever was in a suit. Maybe it’s the lighting though.

Neil is looking at him, Andrew realizes, probably had been before Andrew had even turned to see him and nearly choked on his drink, given the knowing shape of his lips, the playful glint in his eyes.

“Hey, stranger,” he says, and then brings the glass up to his lips. “Fancy meeting you here.” And then he laughs, because it’s the most ridiculous thing he could have said and he said it. Andrew almost cracks a smile himself.

“No, really though,” Neil says, even though Andrew hasn’t said a word yet. “What are you doing here? I mean, I’m glad you’re here. Is that too much? Isn’t it kind of weird that I feel like you were meant to be here?”

So, Neil’s a talker when he’s slightly tipsy, apparently. It isn’t that shocking, in retrospect.  

“It isn’t,” Andrew tells him, “weird.”

Neil smiles wider, which shouldn’t be possible but is. “It’s not.”

 

Somehow Andrew finds himself being dragged out of the hotel, Neil insisting he has to show Andrew the city, even though it’s nearing one o’ clock in the morning and his motor skills are somewhat lacking.

“Where are we going?” Andrew asks him, matching his pace and closing the distance between them enough to that if Neil trips, he’ll be able to catch him before he falls to the ground.

“The Takeshita-Dori market. It’s only a few blocks from here.”

So Andrew follows, until the sidewalk grows wider and the people more numerous, until they reach a crosswalk so large a mass of a hundred people could cross at the same time, until he’s looking and looking and there are people in business suits, in fluffed up skirts, giant boots, such various street fashions it’s almost overwhelming taking it all in, until he’s walking across the street with a thousand other people and Neil beside him, but he doesn’t feel threatened or closed in, until he’s on the other side and entering a market so huge and large and colorful it kind of hurts to look at.

“This,” Neil says to him, guiding him over to the side and pointing to a sign. “Have you tried this?”

“No,” Andrew says honestly, looking at what Neil is pointing at.

“It’s Takoyaki. I was never a foodie, but this makes me one.” Neil hops over to the small booth, says something to a young woman and then looks over his shoulder at Andrew, beckoning him with an urgent hand and child-like excitement on his face.

“Look,” he says when Andrew is close enough, and Andrew does, watching through the glass as the woman’s deft hands roll what looks like batter into a ball with two sticks, turn them over a few times to cook on a muffin pan-like stovetop, and then poke them to pick up, before arranging them neatly on a paper tray and handing them to Neil as he hands her the money. Neil snags two pairs of chopsticks from the table, hands one to Andrew, and then stabs a ball and stuffs the entire thing in his mouth in one go, waving a hand over it and mumbling something that sounds like “hot.”

Andrew leans over and stabs another, stuffing it in his mouth and immediately regretting it when it burns him. He chew slowly, keeping face, but Neil is grinning at him, expectancy in his expression. Andrew swallows slowly.

“Good,” he says simply, honestly, and Neil nods like it was the only answer he would have expected or accepted, satisfied.

It’s a good night to walk the streets, Andrew thinks. He likes the ruddy pink of Neil’s cheeks from the slight chill, the way he bundles himself up in an oversized sweater and hugs himself and lingers in Andrew’s space to sap from his warmth without touching. They walk in silence mostly, Neil humming so softly Andrew would think he was imagining it over the sound of the busy streets if not for the way his head sways with the beat.

It’s bright, too, and the lights cast pretty shadows over Neil’s face, a thousand colors that all compliment him well. His eyes are brighter though, gazing around at the flashing signs and the swarm of people in the narrow streets of the market. He looks like a kid, seeing the world for the first time. Andrew can’t remember when he ever felt that way. Except maybe now.

“I could live here,” Neil says. “It’s so populated for such a small city, it’d be hard for anyone to find you.”

“Who is looking?” Andrew asks. Neil pauses mid step, right in the middle of a crowd. People walk around them, but Andrew stays still, watching Neil.

“No one,” he says. It doesn’t sound like a lie, but it doesn’t sound like the whole truth either. Not for the first time Andrew is struck by how much he doesn’t know about Neil, about the scars on his hands that he knows travel further up his arms, what other scars might be hiding underneath, why he rubs his wrists that way, why he has a kind of dark look in his eyes that Andrew sees when he looks in the mirror, one that contradicts so violently with his smile that both shouldn’t be of the same person, but are.

“Not anymore, at least,” Neil goes on. Andrew says nothing. Neil picks up another takoyaki ball and stuffs it in his mouth. They remain standing still.

“You’ll choke if you keep doing that,” Andrew says, slapping him gently on the back twice when he coughs. Neil looks at him, smiling around a mouthful, eyes watering. The light casts off them prettily, just as always. Andrew wants to kiss him like this. He doesn’t.

 

Neil takes him to what he calls an izakaya, orders them sake, and drinks too much.

Andrew wants to know why. Neil had sobered up quickly enough after they’d left the hotel bar, but he seems eager to drink more now. Andrew wonders if he’s trying to forget something, if there’s something wrong, but he doesn’t ask because he doesn’t want a lie and doesn’t want a truth given to him when Neil can’t think if he wants to speak it or not. By the time they leave, Neil is just as tipsy if not more so as what he was before they’d left. Andrew reaches for him whenever he sways slightly, but he seems otherwise fine.

“What’s your room number?” Andrew asks him once they’ve reached the hotel.

“What?”

“Your room number.”

“Oh. 431.” Neil reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wallet, sliding out his keycard and swiping it over the elevator sensor. Andrew follows him in, glances at the mirror and startles at the image of them standing side by side for a brief moment. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s that they look so familiar beside each other. Maybe it’s something else.

Andrew leads Neil to his room, takes the keycard from his hand gently and swipes them in, stepping inside but not bothering with the light. He turns back to Neil only to watch him fall against the wall, eyes squeezed tightly shut. Andrew closes the space between them, puts two hands to his shoulders to keep him upright.

“I’m sorry,” Neil says. “It’s… it’s my mom’s birthday. I forgot this morning because I was with you, but I’d remembered. That’s why I was in the bar.”

“Okay,” Andrew says, because he doesn’t understand but it’s an explanation, at least. “It’s okay. Hold here,” he instructs him, guiding Neil’s hands.

“But,” Neil says, hiccups and frowns. “You don’t like to be touched.”

“You can if I say it’s okay.”

“Okay,” Neil says, and wraps one arm around Andrew’s neck as told.

He’s perfectly aware of Neil turning his head this way and that in an attempt to catch his gaze, and knows all too well the sloppy smile on his face and glistening eyes when he finally relents to him. “What?” He says.

Neil smiles wider but says nothing. His arm slips from Andrew’s neck, and Andrew grabs it to put back in place. He flops Neil down on the bed, keeping a hand on his back so he doesn’t go sprawling backwards quite yet, and finally looks up to Neil, his heart catching in his throat when he sees his expression.

“Don’t look at me like that” Andrew says, much more softly than me means to.

Neil tilts his head like he doesn’t understand, but he attempts to smother his smile, mostly failing and making for quite a sight as his mouth turns up and down comically.

“Sorry,” he says, sounding not very sorry at all. “You’re just,“ he hiccups, “you’re really beautiful.”

“And you’re drunk,” Andrew tells him, ignoring the flutter in his gut. It’s so remarkably like the feeling he gets when he’s too high off the ground, when he’d dangle his feet over roofs as a teenager because it was one of the only things he knew to do that would make him _feel._ But it’s so remarkably different.

“I am,” Neil concedes, his expression all seriousness now. “It’s still true, though.”

Andrew leans down to untie Neil’s shoes, pulling them off and smacking Neil’s foot lightly when he wiggles his toes in freedom.

“I have to tell you something,” Neil says when he’s done taking them off, throwing them somewhere off to the side. Andrew looks back up at him.

“What?”

“Yesterday, on the flight,” Neil says. “I knew you were scared of heights.”

“How?”

“You,” Neil hiccups. “You have a tell. You rub your wrists.” Neil hovers a hand over Andrew’s right forearm, the one that’s resting on the bed right beside Neil’s thigh, tickling the fabric of his jeans just barely. “To ground yourself. I do it, too, sometimes.”

“I have to tell you something,” Andrew says, echoing Neil’s words.

“What?” Neil says, smiling, loopy and happy, gums pink, teeth white.

“I know you do.”

“How?”

“I saw you do it.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “My hands… they’re not… It’s my scars. I hate them.”

“Why?”

“Because, they remind me.”

Andrew wants to ask. He wants to know everything about Neil, the stupid things like how he takes his coffee, what his favorite color is, the first thing he does when he wakes up in the morning, what he’s scared of and what kinds of things he dreams about, has nightmares about, things he’s never cared about before, things he shouldn’t.

But he doesn’t, because he feels like he’s been given enough already, and he feels like getting truths out of Neil when he’s like this would be cheating. He wants honesty. He wants the time you put into knowing someone, in and out, transforming them from stranger to something more, whatever that may be. Whatever it is, he knows he wants Neil to be it.  

“Okay,” he says, and makes to get up, pausing when Neil’s breath hitches and looking back down at him.

“Where are you going?”

“My room,” Andrew says, forgetting for a moment he doesn’t technically have one. His suitcase is somewhere in the lobby still. He doesn’t particularly care at the moment, though.

“Don’t. You can stay here.”

“Neil,” Andrew starts, but is quickly interrupted.

“I know you don’t want to be touched. I can sleep on the floor. But,” Neil pauses, swallows hard and looks down at his lap, clenching his fists. “I don’t want to be alone right now. And you-- you make me feel safe, for some reason.”

Andrew looks at him, at the way his fingers clench tightly around each other, turning his skin white, at the tightness of his jaw. He looks and looks and then he leans down and hovers a hand over Neil’s, not touching, not yet, but wanting to. Because it’s the same for him. Neil makes him feel safe. He feels safer even now knowing it’s the same for him.

“Can I hold your hands?” He asks.

“Yes,” Neil says. So Andrew does, gently prying Neil’s grip away from himself, rubbing over the half moon marks he’s carved into his palm, lacing their fingers together. And he’d never really understood what people meant when they said two hands slotted perfectly together, that the spaces between their fingers were made perfectly for each other, perfectly aligned, but now he thinks he does.

Neil squeezes his hand in Andrew’s grip. “You’re really warm,” he says.

“Does that surprise you?”

“No,” Neil says. “I think people think you’re cold, but you’re really the opposite.”

“That has nothing to do with the temperature of my hands.”

Neil smiles, squeezes tightly and brings his other hand to rest atop their intertwined fingers. “Andrew, thank you.”

“For what?”

“For staying.”

Andrew nods, squeezing Neil’s hands lightly. “You’re not sleeping on the ground. It’s a queen, so as long as you don’t kick, it’ll be fine.”

“I won’t kick.”

 

He doesn’t. Andrew has the best night’s rest he’s had for a long time. Maybe ever.

+

When Andrew wakes, Neil is gone from his side of the bed. Andrew puts a hand to it, still warm, meaning he can’t have left too long ago. For a moment Andrew is disappointed, but then he glances and finds Neil’s shoes and clothes are still thrown haphazardly across the room.

Andrew leans over to touch his toes, stretching the ache in his back and legs, and then flops back down on the bed and stares up at the ceiling, waiting. For what, he doesn’t know, but he feels perfectly content right here, the kind that washes away all possible worries and leaves you with that slightly elated feeling, like everything will be fine, if only just for a little while. It’s been a long time since Andrew’s felt that way. He doesn’t remember ever waking up with it, for certain.

There’s a knock on the door, light and soft, and then Neil is back, peering at Andrew with that same soft look on his face and padding over back to his side of the bed, flopping down and taking the same position as Andrew with his back to the mattress, three inches between them. Andrew could reach over and thread his hands in the fabric of his shirt easily.

He turns his head to Neil, watches with half lidded eyes as Neil picks from the bowl rested on his chest and peers at what looks to be an animal cracker.

“Good for hangovers,” Neil says. “This one,” he bites its head off,” has got to be a zebra.”

He says the word like someone English would, like /ˈzɛbrə/, and Andrew wonders not for the first time how many accents and countries Neil has known, how many have melded into his voice, into him. It strikes him again how very little he really knows about Neil. He could just ask, he knows, but still he doesn't yet, wanting to draw everything out for as long as he can get away with. He has a feeling even if he didn’t, it would take a long time to know even a little of what made up all the parts of Neil.

“It’s a goat,” Andrew corrects, reaching over and stealing the beheaded half from him. Neil frowns and then laughs at himself before picking up another, inspecting it closely.

“Sheep,” he says decisively.

It’s still wrong, but Andrew doesn’t say anything, because it might be subjective anyway, and instead watches Neil study the thing before eating its legs first, arms, and then head. He turns to Andrew, nudging at his knee lightly, a question in his eyes like he’s unsure if the proximity is okay, and wants to be careful.

“Hey,” he says, when Andrew nudges him back. “How long are you in Tokyo?”

“Four days,” Andrew says.

Neil’s mouth tugs into an unhappy frown. “What’s your job anyhow?”

“It’s not that interesting,” Andrew says. What he means is that he works with assholes who think the world revolves around them and would shit on anyone who dared think otherwise, and also that he’s never come across used diapers or ecstasy users in his career. What he means, is that he’s good at it, and it pays the bills, and he’s probably going to spend his entire life doing it, but that it’s the most boring thing he can think of talking about, and he’d rather not bore Neil, not that he cares if he does. He really does.

“I want to know, though,” Neil says, whining slightly like a child. “Tell me?”

Andrew sighs, his mouth tugging upwards involuntarily at the way Neil is looking so curious about what he shouldn’t be. “Started out as just a desk job, really,” Andrew says. “But then I made some stupid suggestion to my boss about sales, and he went off about how ingenious it was, when it really wasn’t, shipped me off to some meeting in L.A. with the orders to get them on board, so I did. Now I hop around convincing people to fund projects, get them to love the idea, eat food and play nice.”

Neil hums. When he speaks his voice is still slightly gravely from the sleep. “Can I say something?”

“Go ahead.”

“Your job, you’re probably really good at it, but it doesn’t seem like you want to be.”

Andrew exhales. “People are easy. Plaster on a smile, get in a few good words and boost their ego a little, and they’re convinced it’s the best idea they’ve ever seen, that the investment is worth it. Sometimes it is. A lot of the time it’s not. It’s dishonest work, really.”

“And you like honesty.” Maybe it was supposed to be a question, but Neil doesn’t say it like one.

Andrew hums in acknowledgement. “What about you? Flight attendant? How’d you even pass training?”

Neil laughs, light and amused. “I don’t really look the part, do I? All put together and pretty.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Andrew says, because though he’s not about to say it aloud, Neil is the kind of beautiful that seems impossible, that is hard to forget once you’ve seen him. “Sure you do. What I meant was you’re crap at service. And you can barely reach the luggage.”

“Ha. I saw your suitcase fall on you when you tried getting it down.”

“Quiet,” Andrew says, not meaning it at all. Neil laughs again.

“You know,” he says, “they’ve got all these rules you have to follow. I hate them. So I tried bending them, treading the line between keeping my job and getting fired. You can’t wear more than four rings, so I wore six, three on each hand, trying to see if anyone would notice. You can’t wear anything that clashes with the blue suit, so I wore a yellow dress shirt underneath. Men can’t wear piercings, so I got my ears pierced. It was all really dumb, kind of embarrassing, like some stupid teen rebel trying to get out from underneath his parent’s house, but I did it anyway. Never managed to get fired. Maybe I was just careful enough.

“Anyhow, I don’t mind it. People are weird as fuck, yeah, and rude and gross and insensitive all the time. It’s the kind of job that makes you lose faith in humanity sometimes, not in a serious way, more in a way where you realize how absurd people are. But it keeps me sane, in a weird way. My smiles are fake, so are my manners, but I get to see the world. I’m safer.”

The last part is what Andrew doesn’t understand. It seems to be a recurring theme for Neil. _Safer,_ like he’s running from something. Like he had been and couldn’t shake the habit.

“What are you running from?” He asks.

Neil shifts so his arm pillows his head, looking at Andrew with so little space between them. “I want to tell you,” he says softly, honestly. Andrew can see the glint of metal he was talking about in his ear, hidden by tufts of too bright hair, wants to reach out and trace it with his finger. “I want to tell you,” Neil says again, like the words need to be said twice. “But I don’t want this to be over.”

“It won’t be,” Andrew says, because he isn’t afraid of what Neil’s answer might be, isn’t afraid of what he has to say. He wouldn’t leave for hearing it.

“Not that way,” Neil says. “I mean… I want to keep some truths for later, so we don’t…” He can’t seem to find the words, but Andrew thinks he understands, thinks he can find them for him, for both of them.

“Okay,” he says easily. “Then keep it, and tell me when we meet again.”

“I have a flight in two hours,” Neil says, breathing it like he hates the words to be louder than they need for Andrew to hear. “But I promise to see you again.”

+

Andrew doesn’t care enough to hate his job, but he gets pretty close to it.

He collapses on the hotel bed after a long day spent with idiot assholes who thought they were smarter than three years of statistics telling them the contrary. He shouldn’t care. He really doesn’t. He needs his paycheck though.

He adjusts the pillows so they’re more comfortable and flips open his laptop, scrolling through the news fo a few minutes to pass the time, when an icon pops up of a familiar smiling face. He presses answer to the incoming call and adjusts himself so Nicky won’t get a lovely view of his double chin and nothing else.

“Andrew!” Nicky greets through the microphone, too loudly. “You’re kind of grainy. I can’t see you.” Nicky pouts because getting to see Andrew properly is something he actually cares about.

“It’s the shitty hotel wifi,” Andrew tells him, adjusting his screen and smacking it a few times like that will do anything to fix it. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay!” Nicky says. “How’s work?”

“Boring.”

“Nice,” Nicky says, and Andrew almost laughs, because he sounds so enthusiastic for such a lackluster answer.

“Nicky, don’t call to talk to me about work.”

“I don’t what else to talk to you about!” Nicky whines. “You tell me next to nothing about your personal life. I had to hear through Aaron that you got promoted. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it doesn’t matter,” Andrew says. The only reason Aaron had known was because he’d asked where the extra income was coming from and Andrew hadn’t felt like evading the answer. “How’s Germany?”

“Oh, it’s lovely! Erik is looking at bigger flats right now. Everything is so much cheaper here than it is in the states. I don’t know why you won’t just move here with me.”

“Med school,” Andrew reminds him.

“Right, right. Honestly, I didn’t think so at first, but Aaron’s going to make a great doctor.”

“Maybe once he pays off the loans,” Andrew says.

Nicky smiles, warm and cheery and a little too much for Andrew’s liking, but Andrew doesn’t tell him to stop. He leans in closer to the cam, peering at Andrew with that stupid happy expression on his face. “So quicker because you’re helping him?”

Andrew hums, and that’s enough for Nicky to leave it at that, knowing he won’t get much more out of Andrew about the matter, but smiling cheerily nonetheless.

“How’s Tokyo? Is it just as busy as they say it is?”

“Haven’t been out a lot.”

“Aw, why? Does work really not give you any free time to just be a regular old white tourist?”

“I had some time today, but stayed in.”

“Why!?”

“Tired.”

“Could it be,” Nicky starts, and really Andrew should have seen it coming. Nicky had a sixth sense when it came to these things, uncanny almost. “That you were with someone?”

“No,” Andrew lies.

“Liar,” Nicky says. “You were with someone. But, like, how?”

“Not like that, Nicky,” Andrew says, giving up, because when Nicky is caught up on something he doesn’t let it go, and there’s really no point in trying to evade it longer.

“Okay,” Nicky accepts easily. “But how? I mean, if you met someone in Tokyo, that’s long distance. You’re leaving in a week. Oh, that’s tragic.”

“He doesn’t live in Tokyo.”

“Then where does he live?”

“He,” Andrew pauses. “Shit.”

“You don’t know?!”

“I… might have forgotten to ask.”

“Andrew, what the hell.”

“It’s been a long time, Nicky.”

“I know, but now he’s lost! He could be anywhere!”

“Calm down,” Andrew says, running a hand through his hair and thinking it through. How did this not come up in the conversation? They’d both been too caught up in everything else to even think to ask.

“I’ll calm down when you find him,” Nicky says. “This is worse than long distance. This is you don’t even know distance.”

Andrew shakes his head. “Chill, Nicky. I’ll figure it out.”

“Okay, okay. Let me know? I gotta go though. Erik wants to try this new restaurant and he actually booked reservations because of how extra he is.”

“That’s nice,” Andrew says, and he means it. “Have fun.”

“I will. You too, yeah? I miss you! Love you!”

It’s not the first time Nicky’s said it. He’s made a habit of it almost. Andrew never says it back, but Nicky never seems bothered by the lack of reception. All he does now is nod, humming in acknowledgment, but he’s never the one to end the call first.

+

Andrew’s plan goes as follows:

Book Neil’s airline.

That’s pretty much it. He doesn’t know Neil’s work hours, if he’ll be on this particular plane even. He purchases two tickets as always, with enough miles to make it cheap, not that he would care otherwise. It’s his company’s money.

He drags his suitcase across the airport, jogging a little so his backpack jostles against his bag, hurrying for no reason really, because he’d arrived with more than enough time to browse the airport mall, maybe buy an overly sweetened drink from the coffee shop, but he finds himself heading straight for the terminal despite the lack of time crunch.

He settles in his chair and pulls out his phone, checking the time. It’s another forty minutes until boarding time. He takes a quick look around for something to occupy his time with, settling on browsing the bookstore even though he has not particular interest in reading anything right now.

He ends up buying a neck pillow, because he can’t sleep on planes but at least he could go for some comfort in the form of one of the best innovations to grace this earth in his lifetime. Then he settles back in his chair, hooks the thing around his neck and throws his head back, closing his eyes while tapping one foot impatiently.

“Seats one through thirty, please line up for boarding,” an announcer speaks. Andrew gets up quickly, grabbing his bag and dragging his suitcase along, cursing Nicky for convincing him to bring him back a thousand souvenirs, leaving the pillow around his neck because it’s the most comfortable thing he’s ever had on and he probably wouldn’t give it up for anything.

“Have a safe flight,” the woman tells him after taking his boarding passes, scanning them and giving them back. She doesn’t mention that he has two. Probably doesn’t care enough to.

Andrew murmurs a thanks and makes his way down the hallway towards the plane. This is around the time his nerves start catching up to him, leaving him anxious and trembling. He clenches his hands into fists, ignoring the stupid voice in his head screaming to him about the height, about falling. It’s an airplane. The statistical possibility of anything life threatening happening to him is slim to none, he remembers. But if anything did it would be a quick death. He hears the words in Neil’s voice, scoffs to himself and smiles the tiniest smile, because it shouldn’t be a comfort but it is, just like it was the first time.

Andrew finds his seat quickly enough, reaches over and shoves his suitcase into the overhead locker with very little grace, and plops down on the seat. He twists a pen in his hand out of nervous habit, pressing the tip of it down on his wrist, not hard enough to hurt, but definitely enough to feel it. Just like everything else is right now, it reminds him of Neil, of their shared habit. He wonders what kinds of scars Neil has that Andrew hasn’t seen, on his skin and on his heart.

“Andrew,” he says above him, and Andrew’s heart jumps into his throat when he turns to look at him, smiling down at him like he knew he’d be here, even though it’s just a surprise for the both of them. He doesn’t believe in fate or coincidences, never has, but this is the kind of thing that could convince him. If he ignored the fact that he’d booked the same airline hoping to see him again, like some fanatical stalker.

“Neil,” he says.  

“I’ve got to prepare for takeoff,” Neil says, “but just for future reference, is this seat taken?” He points to the empty seat by Andrew, the one right by the window, because Andrew had taken the aisle, not wanting to risk missing a well dressed, pretty faced flight attendant walking down it.

“Saving it for someone,” Andrew tells him.  

“Oh? Who’s that?”

“A friend,” Andrew says. He’s not sure if that’s what they are, because the word doesn’t seem quite right, like it’s too small for them, but it’s all he can come up with in the moment.

Neil smiles, a knowing look in his eyes, crinkling at the edges in such a childlike, happy way that Andrew is kind of in awe for a split second before he snaps himself out of it. “Lucky friend,” he says, laughter bubbling in his voice.

“He is,” Andrew says.

“Well, have a safe slight, Andrew,” Neil says, polite as ever, lacing the words with something more than what they mean outwardly, and then he moves on down the aisle, taking his position for a safety demonstration that Andrew now realizes he missed the first time, but watches intently now, because he’d rather be prepared for impending doom, and Neil really does look like he knows what he’s doing. It’s kind of ridiculous really, when he hangs a life vest over his chest and blows through the tubes, holding them up to better be seen. The fake smile on his face. The faux enthusiasm. Andrew watches anyway.

And then the pilot is announcing taxi, and Andrew is clutching at the sides of the seats as they leave the ground, clenching his jaw but otherwise still. The nerves never really leave him in the air, but he feels more settled than he ever has in flight.

“Sorry about your friend,” Neil says, and Andrew looks back up at him again. “But I’m taking this seat.” He steps over Andrew’s feet and flops down beside him with a heavy exhale.

“Shouldn’t you be working?”

“Technically yes. But I told Rachel I had important business with a passenger. Nice girl. She’s taking my seats.”

“What’s this important business, then?”

“Oh, nothing very interesting. Just need to keep him comfortable, make sure he’s satisfied with our service. He’s threatened to file a complaint about me, you see? Can’t be losing my job.”

“I’m sure you can turn things around,” Andrew says.

Neil smiles, and it’s all for Andrew, the softness in his eyes, the shape of his lips, the way he can’t seem to look away. “I definitely can. Nice pillow by the way.”

Andrew realizes he’s still wearing the thing, and actually laughs lightly. “It’s amazing,” he says.

Neil hums, his eyes twinkling. “So how’s the flight going?”

“Better,” Andrew says, doesn’t elaborate on why. He tilts his head to rest a cheek on the side of his pillow, looking at Neil, wonders how comical he looks to Neil with the thing around his neck.

“I promised you a truth, didn’t I?” Neil says.

“You did.”

“Will you wait for it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll be back when the rest of the plane is asleep. I’ll snag you an extra dessert.”

“Okay,” Andrew says, and even though Neil hadn’t stayed long at all, is getting back up and fixing his suit and stepping back over Andrew and into the aisle, Andrew doesn’t feel rushed or impatient. He can wait. He wants to.

 

Andrew passes the time by watching other passengers, looking for any signs that they would play a significant role in one of Neil’s stories. Most seem normal, though, and leave Andrew more bored than how he started. He does see one woman get up with a cup noodle in hand, go into the lavatory, and come back with the thing overflowing with water. Andrew wonders if it’s sanitary. Decides not to think about it too much. Someone else tries clipping their fingernails only to be smacked by what seems like his mother. Other than that, the only thing that holds his interest is Neil, who walks up and down his aisle every now and then and fixes Andrew with the warmest smile every time. He drops off something wrapped neatly in a napkin without a word, which turns out to be a brownie that actually tastes good. Probably from first class.

Finally, the aisle lights dim, and people rustle around in their seats, putting on eye masks, reclining chairs, snoring. And then a few minutes later, Neil shows up, doesn’t say hello, simply steps over Andrew and settles back into his seat.

“I’m exhausted,” he says. “They should pay us more.”

“Capitalism.”

“True.” Neil tucks his knees up to his chest, rests his cheek on one and looks at Andrew, eyes half lidded. “The best part of the flight is when people are asleep.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because then I can do whatever I want. I can sit with you.”

Andrew doesn’t know what to say that, so he doesn’t say anything. He watches and waits for Neil to go on.

“The answer to your question,” Neil starts, “is that I’m not running from anyone.”

He pauses. The plane is unlit, but Andrew can make out the color of his eyes easily, glowing brightly in the dark. “My father was the kind of man people feared. His job was killing people. And he would have killed us eventually, so on my eleventh birthday my mother took me and ran. I spent my entire childhood running. And then he caught up to us, and killed her, and I burned her body and then kept running until he found me, too.”

Neil pauses, rubs at his wrists and grimaces. “That’s what these are from,” he says, motioning to the scars on his hands. “He wanted to draw it out, wanted to kill me slowly because I was the invalid, the son he was ashamed of and I had to pay. So he marked me, and he would have killed me except I got lucky and the authorities arrived before he could. I told them everything that I knew, and they acquitted me for what we had to do to stay alive on the run, gave me a new identity, and now I’m here. I’m not running anymore. But sometimes I can’t shake the habit of it. Sometimes I wake up and I think I’m ten years old again, and my father has a knife to my throat because I couldn’t sit still at dinner.”

Andrew doesn’t tell him he’s sorry. He doesn’t because he knows it wouldn’t mean anything, that he wouldn’t want to hear it, that he hated to when people would. He looks at Neil, who looks so small in his curled up position, so fearless, too, and he offers a truth of his own.

“I grew up in foster care,” he says. “My mother gave us up when we were born, but came back for Aaron. I didn’t know he existed until someone mistook me for him, but by then it was too late to change anything. I can’t remember a single good foster home.”

Andrew recalls the day the police officer had tapped on his shoulder and called him by a name he didn’t recognize. He thinks about Cass, but there’s no ache where there used to be, only passive acknowledgement.

“I moved in with him and my mother after getting out of juvie. She tried to hide it, but she would beat him. I promised that I’d protect him, so I did, and I got rid of her.”

Neil says nothing, but the look in his eyes is one of complete understanding. He’s never said it to anyone before, and doesn’t know why Neil should be different, only that it makes complete sense that he is, only that Neil has known worse and understands the kind of promise Andrew had to keep.

“Aaron hated me for it,” Andrew says. “Still does.”

“You kept your promise.”

“That’s not how he sees it.”

“Then he’s not seeing it how he should be.”

Andrew studies him, the hard look in his eyes, the firm set of his lips, the way he doesn’t break away from Andrew’s gaze. It’s almost too much, and too fast, and Andrew knows he’s known Neil for less than a week but it feels like it’s been so much longer than that. It scares him that it does.

“You kept your promise,” he says again. “I couldn’t keep any of mine. You kept Aaron safe, but my mother would have killed me for the risks I took after she died. I’m like a patchwork quilt.” Neil pauses, breathing slowly, audibly. He’s so close Andrew can see the rise and fall of his chest easily. “I’ve made myself up from parts of other people. Sometimes I don’t even know which parts of me are real and which aren’t. I want to be known, but I don’t know who I am.”

“I know you,” Andrew says.

“Not all of me.”

“Then let me.”

Neil leans forward. His eyes flicker from Andrew’s eyes to his lips and then back again. His hands are stuck firmly underneath his thighs, a gesture that doesn’t go unnoticed. He leans forward and closes the space between them, and Andrew leans forward and meets him in the middle, slipping off the neck pillow he’d forgotten he was wearing, almost laughing at the unfittingness of it. And then they are close enough to count each other’s eyelashes, not touching yet. Neil’s eyes are hooded, dark, so blue they hurt to look at. Andrew can’t look away.

“Okay,” Neil says.

And then Andrew kisses him.

Neil tastes like the mints they hand out before takeoff and like chapstick. His lips are soft and pliant beneath Andrew’s, his mouth parted, tongue warm. His hands are stuffed beneath his thighs still, but in his haze Andrew reaches forward to pull them away and tangle his fingers with Neil’s. He leans forward across the armrest, stomach pressing into it but he doesn’t care because Neil is making a soft sort of humming sound, and it vibrates against Andrew where their chests are pressed together, and he can’t breathe but he doesn’t want to pull away so he decides he won’t, stealing what air he can between their mouths before pressing them together again, memorizing the shape of Neil’s lips with his own.

He’s on a plane, forty thousand feet in the air, and he is falling. But he isn’t afraid.

+

A hoard of people pass Andrew, who walks slower than the crowd to draw out the time. He pauses at the end of the walkway, tucking his suitcase in closer and watching as travelers unite with their families, smiling and laughing and crying, balloons and flowers and cardboard signs in hand.

Families hug and leave, chatting away about this and that. The halls empty, and then it is simply him and a few other stragglers, in the middle of the night in the middle of an emptying airport, each one of them waiting for something different.

Finally, Andrew spots him, coming out of the tunnel looking disheveled and frantic, at a pace fast enough to look hurried but also to maintain an air of professionalism. Andrew doesn’t call out to him, waiting instead.

He watches Neil pause and turn his head to look around the airport, searching, running a hand through his already messy hair, his cheeks that same shade of pink that Andrew had admired too freely before from the exertion of rushing off the plane. And then he watches his gaze cast over to Andrew in the corner, the relief that spreads across his expression, like he thought Andrew wouldn’t wait, which was frankly a ridiculous thing to think and which Andrew noted to reassure Neil about later. He watches the tiny smile that his lips take when he spots Andrew. He doesn’t remember anyone ever looking at him that way. And just as usual he doesn’t know what to think of it, only that he wants to close the distance between them so he can get a better view of it, maybe kiss it off, too.

Andrew walks. Neil walks. They meet in the middle. Neil smiles still, cocks his head to the side like he’s about to ask a question. He looks so fond that Andrew feels like he’s falling all over again.

“You waited,” he says.

 _Of course I did_ , Andrew wants to say. _It wouldn’t make sense not to,_ he wants to say. Instead, he reaches out and laces his fingers with Neil’s, remembering again that cliche, the one about how easily two hands slot together, how true it seems now that he’s holding Neil’s.

“I did.”


	2. EXTRAS.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Welcome to the mile high club."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i got rlly clingy with this au fjdkla; 
> 
> i'm like,, highkey embarrassed by this they don't string together v well but [shrug emoji] such are plotless extras

Andrew didn’t mind people watching. It was just that he’d much rather be looking at one particular person right now rather than a mass of them, and that one particular person’s flight just so happened to be delayed. He checks his watch for the fifth time in too short a time, decides to walk one more aimless lap around the airport to kill time, and then stops right back where he started.

A woman stands a few feet beside him with a bouquet of bright red roses in hand, tapping her foot impatiently and looking down to check the time every now and then, a gesture which Andrew sympathizes with. He watches the twirl of the flowers in her anxious hands, and suddenly his own feel a little more empty than they had a minute ago.

He thinks about it, the concept of buying welcome flowers. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to him. They would die a few weeks later anyhow, were impractical and over priced, and store-bought usually smelled like nothing, which Andrew thought kind of defeated half the purpose to begin with. He thinks about it, about Neil arriving back from a shift, tired and jetlagged and sleep-deprived, and about himself shoving a bouquet of flowers into his face. It doesn’t quite fit, and he doesn’t feel like either of them are missing out on whatever sentiment is supposedly behind the entire concept, but the idea is easy to entertain anyhow, hypothetically. And fitting for the day that it is.  

Finally, a crowd of people begin walking out from the exit, looking various levels of haggard and tired, finding familiar faces and going to them. Andrew watches a woman dragging a large suitcase walk up to the other with the bouquet in hand, take it from her with a huge smile, her mouth sounding words Andrew can’t hear from where he is but that make the both of them laugh gently, before they clasp hands and go on their way home.

Neil will be among the last ones out, he knows, which doesn’t help his patience but there’s not much he can do about it. He thinks about when Neil told him that flight attendants don’t get paid until they are actually in the air, and thinks also Neil should use that as justification to leave the plane without cleaning up, just so he’s out here sooner. And then he shakes his head, because he can stand a few more minutes if he needs to, and he waits, but eyes the exit like by sheer will alone Neil will come walking out of it sooner.

It must help some though, because soon enough he spots Neil making his way through the exit tunnel, suitcase in tow, looking just as pretty as ever in his uniform and chatting away to another attendant beside him. He waves goodbye to her as he exits, looks around with searching eyes, and lands them on Andrew.

He’s never sure if he’ll ever get used to the way Neil looks at him. Its effect should have lessened already, given how often he fixes Andrew with the expression, and yet it’s never failed to erupt in Andrew a warmth he’s gotten too used to in his company, a feeling of comfort, of familiarity and safety. He has this look in his eyes, like Andrew is the one and only thing he wants to be looking at, like he’s his anchor, like he can breathe easier just seeing him. It’s something Andrew feels himself, looking at Neil, which is how he recognizes it at all.

Neil walks towards him, closing the distance fast, and Andrew walks towards him, helping him to, the two of them meeting in the middle like they so always do.

“Hi,” Neil says, tilting his head in a curious way, eyes never wavering from Andrew’s. From this distance he can see how tired Neil really is, how he probably hasn’t gotten much sleep in the last thirty-six hours of on and off again flights.

“Hi, yourself,” Andrew replies, reaching out to grab Neil’s handbag from him, which Neil relinquishes easily, probably exhausted from all the heavy lifting of suitcases. “How was your trip?”

“Could’ve been better,” Neil admits, following Andrew as he turns to make way to the car, matching his pace perfectly. “Some guy threw a cup at me because I wasn’t serving his drinks fast enough, apparently. But that’s pretty much it.”

“Want me to kill him?”

Neil laughs, his voice kind of scratchy from the tiredness, but warm and happy nonetheless. “I do, but not if you go to jail for it. Maybe next time.”

“Next time then,” Andrew agrees, and they walk the rest of the way in comfortable silence.

 

Neil sleeps on the car ride home. He’s stolen Andrew’s neck pillow from the backseat and hooked it around his neck, had reached out to hold Andrew’s hand over the console, threading their fingers together, and then he’d closed his eyes and fallen asleep. Andrew can tell immediately by his breathing and loosened grip, but he doesn’t let go. It would probably wake him if he tried to.

When he parks he moves quietly, taking in Neil’s bags first to give him a couple extra minutes of sleep before coming back to his side of the car, leaning over to unbuckle his seatbelt and saying his name quietly to wake him, knowing that will be enough to.

Neil rustles, opens his eyes slowly and peers at Andrew, the light from the street lamp casting an orange shadow over his face. Andrew reaches out to brush away his overgrowing fringe, which he’s probably growing out just to mess with job regulations. Neil blinks up at him.  

“We’re home,” Andrew tells him.

“M’kay,” Neil replies, and slides out of the car, following Andrew to the stairs of their one bedroom apartment with a slight tiredness to his step, and closing the door behind them, trapping out the cold night night air and leaving them to soak in each other’s body heat and the warmth of the apartment.

Andrew is thinking they should go right to bed. He’s not particularly tired, and honestly doesn’t think he’ll be able to fall asleep soon, but Neil definitely needs to fix his schedule as quickly as he can lest he be sleeping all day and staying up all night, which he’s not in the business of entertaining.

He quickly finds out Neil has other plans though, because suddenly he’s in front of Andrew, standing in the doorway of their home. It’s too dark to make out his expression very well, because neither of them have bothered to switch on the lights, but Andrew knows it by heart already.

“Hey,” Neil says softly, and leans in, slowly so Andrew can pull away easily if he wants to. He doesn’t.

He always misses this. More than he’d like to admit. He misses Neil’s gentle hands in his hair, his arms wrapped around his neck, his chest rising fast against Andrew’s like he can’t catch his breath and the softness of his lips parting for Andrew’s, chapped from the long flight. Neil mumbles something of the same sentiment against Andrew’s open mouth, his voice warm and out of breath.  

“Neil,” Andrew says, pulling away slightly only to lean back in to kiss Neil again, and then again. “You’re tired,” he says in between the fourth or the fifth or the sixth, he’s lost count. “And jetlagged,” he says in between the seventh or eighth or ninth. “You need to go to sleep.”

“I slept in the car,” Neil says, pressing a kiss just a little too far to the left and hitting only the corner of Andrew’s mouth, which he makes up for not a second later.

“Not enough.”

“I’m not tired,” Neil says, kissing Andrew below his ear, sending a shiver down his spine that makes Neil smile against his neck. Andrew can feel it. He spins them around in retaliation, pushes Neil so his back hits the hallway wall, cushioning his head with a hand to the back of it. Neil lets out a little huff of breath at the impact, but pulls Andrew closer still, his hands wrapping in the fabric of the front of Andrew’s shirt, crushing them between their chests.

Andrew makes work of his zipper, but there’s not a lot of space between them and neither of them want to relinquish it, so it takes longer than he’d like. Neil doesn’t seem to mind. He laughs a little, starts smiling too hard to keep kissing Andrew very well, and pulls away.

“What?” Andrew asks, curious.

“Nothing,” Neil says, making a little ‘ah’ sound when Andrew finally gets his zipper down and his hand against him. “I just missed you.”

Andrew hums and presses a kiss to Neil’s jaw and one to his neck, the soft kind that he hopes Neil will understand to mean _I missed you, too._

 

“Where’ve you always wanted to go?” Neil asks that night, his head resting heavily on Andrew’s chest, but the weight oddly comforting where it presses into his heart. Andrew feels the vibrations of his voice against bare skin, pulls him in tighter by the arm around his waist. Neil lets him, snuggling in closer and pulling the blanket over them better.

He thinks about it. The truth is he’s never really wanted to go anywhere, at least not anywhere with a name. He could recall a thousand times he thought _I would rather be anywhere but here,_ but anywhere was an abstract concept, something he reached for but could never wrap his fingers around. Until now.

He’s not about to say he’d go anywhere in the world so long as Neil was alongside him, or that he’d stay put his entire life if that’s what Neil wanted, because it’s an intense realization and it scares him like so much else about their relationship does, but he comes pretty close to confessing it anyhow.

Instead he says, “nowhere.”

“Aw,” Neil says, whining it like it’s ruined his fun. “That’s fine, though. I can choose.”

“What exactly are you choosing?”

Neil lifts his head from Andrew’s chest, looks at him at an angle that’s probably uncomfortable for his neck and shifts a little so he’s closer to Andrew’s face. “Our vacation.”

“Vacation,” Andrew repeats.

“Yeah. For the one year mark.”

Oh.

It’s been a year already. Of course Andrew knew. He remembers the woman’s flowers from the airport and that entire line of thought and feels his chest ache suddenly, just slightly, enough to want to reach up and press his hand over it like it might dispel the feeling, a habit from his younger years that never worked but that he never quite got rid of entirely. Of course he knew. He had memory better than he wanted at times. He simply hadn’t expected Neil to remember, because as keen-eyed and perceptive as he was, anniversaries didn’t seem like a thing he would bother to recall. Andrew likes that he’s proven him wrong.

“And where are we going?” He asks.

Neil hums thoughtfully. Andrew feels it against his chest. “I could take you to Paris, the city of love.”

“Uh, hu.”

Neil laughs lightly. “Or I could take you to Spain, where we can eat tapas and drink coffee and sleep in all day.”

“I choose option b.”

“I thought you would.”

And still, he wants to say he wouldn’t care so long as Neil was with him. He could deal with Neil’s stupidly sarcastic love poems walking down a street in Paris. The idea doesn’t even sound half bad.

But he doesn’t. At this point he’s not sure if it’s because he’s afraid to, or if it’s because he doesn’t need to, because he’s sure Neil already knows.

+

“Andrew,” Neil says into his neck, his voice a warm breath against his skin. “This is really uncomfortable.”

Andrew shifts a little to give Neil more space where he’s currently perched on the sink, which gives himself less, but there’s not a lot to work with, and he’s willing to sacrifice the comfort.

“You’re the one who dragged us in here,” Andrew reminds him, pressing a kiss to his neck and smiling when Neil shivers, curling his fingers into the back of Andrew’s shirt.

“I don’t understand how those kids did it,” Neil says, his voice a little breathy, probably from the kisses Andrew is trailing down from behind his ear to his jaw to the space where it meets his neck and further. “This thing is so small, and it’s kind of unsanitary.”

“Again,” Andrew says against him, “your idea.”

“Just,” Neil grunts, shifts a little so his arms move up and wrap more securely around Andrew’s neck. “Give me a second.” He pauses, presses a few kisses to Andrew’s neck and meets his gaze. “Is this too cramped for you?”

“It’s fine,” Andrew says, and he means it.

“Well,” Neil says, and then grins, cheeky and dumb in that childlike way he sometimes does. “Welcome to the mile high club.”

+

In Spain, Neil has been singing the same annoying song on repeat for days now.

Andrew doesn’t know where Neil had found it. It could have been any one of the coffee shops they’d frequented that had played it, and like all runaway kids who’d clearly never had a chance to develop a taste in music themselves, of which Andrew knew only one, Neil was hooked.  

In the shower, as Andrew rubbed complimentary hotel shampoo into his hair with careful fingers (because after two days spend packing they’d still forgotten to bring their own), he’d started humming it, and though Andrew was tempted to get out and leave right then and there just to make a point, Neil’s voice was soft, and the heat of the water was warm, and Neil was working the same scented shampoo into his hair, too, and it all made getting out inconvenient, so he didn’t.

He hummed it while chopping carrots and while petting the stray cat that frequented their room’s patio, and even when Andrew kissed him goodbye before leaving to work for a few hours somewhere he could concentrate better than in the hotel, to which Andrew had threatened never to kiss him again, to which Neil had tilted his head to the side and sang, voice happy and lilting, the sappy, lovelorn chorus.

It irked him. It shouldn’t, really. But the words were stuck in his head, and in Neil’s voice no less, and soon enough he found himself humming the tune quietly himself.

Neil caught him after the fourth time on repeat, walking in after a swim and dropping his bag by the door, kicking his shoes off haphazardly the way he always did, and Andrew would have stopped had he said anything, but he only smiled and began humming it himself, making his way to Andrew on the sofa and laying down in the space Andrew’s made for him on instinct, together humming a lyricless harmony.

+

Neil doesn’t cry. Not for lack of sentiment, although if Andrew were to point out his abundance of it he would likely deny it. He doesn’t cry, but there are droplets like teardrops stuck to his lashes, and when he blinks they pass gently down to the top of his cheekbones.

It rains heavily, the water soaking through the fabric of his shoulder that sticks out from a too small umbrella, even with his hand pressed to the space between Neil’s shoulder blades and Andrew at his back to try and fit them both underneath. He doesn’t know why he bothers. Neil is already soaked, and this close he’s getting Andrew wet, too, shivering and grinning like it doesn’t matter he’s going to inevitably catch a cold.

He blinks again, and a raindrop falls from his lashes to his cheek. Andrew wants to wipe it away, so he does.

“You’re soaking,” he says.

“It’s a good excuse to make hot cocoa isn’t it?”

Andrew says nothing, but makes a mental note to grab some on the way back to the hotel.

“Anyhow, it doesn’t rain here a lot. I like it.”

“Is that why you went prancing out into it?”

Neil laughs. “It’s nice. You’re just a boring old man who can’t appreciate nature.”

“Or I’m a boring old man who doesn’t want to be in bed with a cold for the rest of the week, on vacation.”

Neil nudges him, pressing his body closer and subsequently soaks through Andrew’s shirt. “It’ll be okay because I’ve got an old man to take care of me if I do.”

“No, you don’t,” Andrew says, but he wraps an arm around Neil anyhow, pulling him even closer.

He likes Spain. He likes it better with Neil though. The people are decent, a little loud and pronounce the s’s with th’s instead, which is not the kind of Spanish he learned in high school, but the food is good, and the weather is pleasant except for today, which he doesn’t even mind all that much. The streets are windy and narrow and more than once he’s thought Neil would get them stuck in them while driving, but it’s nice. He could stay here for a long time.

“You wanna head back?” Neil asks. His shoes splosh on the puddles, on purpose most likely, because he’s a child like that. People in ridiculously bright ponchos run this way and that, escaping from the rain, and he shivers a little at a gust of wind, but it’s nice out here. He feels that kind of way you do when everything washes over you, when there’s nothing to worry about, when you fall asleep after a day so long you don’t remember what happened that same morning, content.

“Not yet,” he says, holds Neil closer.

+

“You’re in Spain!” Nicky practically screams over the webcam.

“Yes,” Andrew replies.  

“Why didn’t you tell me? Actually, scratch that. You never tell me anything.” Nicky frowns at the screen, his face a little blurry from the bad hotel wifi, which seems to be a theme in his life.

“It was kind of a last minute decision.”

“You just up and decided to go to Spain?”

“Neil gets us round trips practically for free. It wasn’t like I just had the money laying around.”

“Neil. Who I have yet to meet in person. You know what, you should come and visit me, like tomorrow.”

“What?”

“You’re one country away! And Neil can get you cheap rides, right? You could even drive if you really wanted to. Come see me! I miss you, and I want to meet this infamous Neil.”

Andrew is about to open his mouth to say something, but Nicky quickly disrupts him.

“Andrew, for real. I haven’t seen you in three years.”

He thinks about it. He really is close by, and truthfully Andrew had been contemplating the idea of it before Nicky had even brought it up. He misses his cousin, in some odd, unfamiliar way. And even more oddly, he wants for him to meet Neil.

“Okay,” he says, almost smiles at Nicky’s subsequent shriek. “I’ll ask him about it.”

“We both know he’ll say yes.”

Nicky is, as they both predicted, right.

+

They do end up driving, about two days worth of it, taking turns behind the wheel. He’s not sure why they don’t just buy a couple plane tickets or take a train, but he likes Neil beside him in a fancy rented car. He likes how Neil focuses on the paper map spread out in front of him and directs him where to go on the roads, even though they could more easily just use a GPS. He likes how Neil looks napping in the passenger seat, the sunlight casting a yellow glow on him, and likes even more how he looks behind the wheel.

He likes the low mumble of the radio, and Neil’s voice telling him stories of his childhood, about his life in Spain and in Germany and in a thousand other places, too, about the people he met there that he’d have liked to see just once more again, to thank them for helping him even when they didn’t know they were. He likes how Neil tries to teach him a bit more of the Spanish that he’d learned in high school, how he practices German with him, the both of them rusty but fumbling through the words anyhow. He likes the comfortable silence, and the pile of gas-station snacks they’ve been living off of the past two days, and the long winding roads that stretch never endingly in front of them.

Neil has his socked feet up on the dashboard. Andrew swats at his ankles, more to gain his attention than out of irritancy, but all he does is shift them away, so his head and torso are closer to Andrew, his hair falling over the console as he peers upside down at Andrew. And then he laughs.

“What?” Andrew asks.

“Nothing,” Neil says. “Just, you’re squinting at the sun all angrily. You’re so short the visor doesn’t do much.”

“Do you want to walk home?”

“I would have to swim over the Atlantic.”

“Better start now, then.”

Neil hums in agreement, laughing again. He’s silent for a moment afterwards, probably thinking too hard like he usually does.

“Well,” he says finally, “they say home is where the heart is, so actually I wouldn’t have to walk anywhere at all.”

Andrew glances at him from his peripheral, clenches his hands on the steering wheel and wills his heart to settle. It’s no use though, so he presses his foot to the brake and parks the car to the side of the road, shifting the gear to park.

Neil looks at him curiously from across the console. Andrew unbuckles his seatbelt and leans forward, bridging the small but too large gap between them. “I want to kiss you,” he says.

“So kiss me,” Neil replies, softly, his eyes fluttering closed. Andrew studies his face only a moment longer, before he cradles his cheeks with two hands and kisses him. And kisses him and kisses him, until Neil pulls away only so he can climb over the console and settle himself in Andrew’s lap, and then he kisses him more.

“We should keep driving,” Neil says after a while, but makes no move to get off Andrew’s lap.

“Yeah,” Andrew agrees, but only just pulls Neil in closer, laughing when Neil bumps his head on the top of the car with a small ‘ouch’, and pulling him closer still so it won’t happen again.

 

“Is this it?” Neil asks, looking up at a cute little house with a colorful garden in front.

“Yeah,” Andrew replies, because he remembers distinctly getting the entire tour of the place over Skype, and also Nicky’s detailed description of his newly purchased home, and also how excited he was to have one of his own, with the love of his life, in Germany.

He knocks on the door, and not a second later it swings open, and Nicky’s voice is loud in his ears, though not unpleasant.

“Andrew!” He says, smiling brightly like he always does. It’s kind of disorientating, how happy he always seems to be to see Andrew, because he’s among the very few people who would ever react to Andrew’s presence in such a way, but it makes him immediately feel warm with something like affection.

“Hey,” Andrew says, stepping inside with Neil in tow as Nicky makes way for them.

“God, what took you so long?” Nicky asks, taking Andrew’s bags from him only to dump them by the stairs, which Andrew doesn’t see the point of but doesn’t mention.

“We drove.”

“I was joking about the driving.”

“Well, we did it anyway.”

“We!” Nicky exclaims. “Right! There’s two of you now!” Nicky settles his gaze on Neil, who has been uncharacteristically silent beside Andrew. Andrew watches him for any discomfort, but he seems perfectly fine, maybe just a little unsure of himself, unfamiliar with Nicky, but understanding even without Andrew having explicitly told him how important his cousin is to him.

Nicky sticks out his hand in greeting, smiling brightly. “I’m Nicky, though I’m sure you know that already. It’s really great to finally meet you.”

“Neil,” Neil tells him, taking his hand and smiling just the same. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

 

Erik is a good man, Andrew knows. He looks at Nicky like he's his entire world, and treats Andrew and Neil with a kind of familiarness but mindfulness just the same. Nicky is the happiest he’s ever known him to be here, and it helps Andrew just to know that. They have a dinner that is a ruckus of wildly told stories and jokes thrown over the table, and then slip into a comfortable silence over the coffee table in the living room, drinking coffee and feeling too sleepy for so early in the evening.

Neil retires early with a kiss to Andrew’s forehead and a promise to be more lively in the morning, when Nicky and Erik plan to take them out for sightseeing. Andrew bids him goodnight, promising to join him soon, and then he steals Neil’s jacket from the coat rack and goes to sit outside on the patio swingset, swinging and staring out at a beautiful sunset and an overgrown but still lovely garden.

Nicky joins him after a few minutes, sitting in silence beside him, his feet kicking so the swing sways a little more. Andrew can tell he wants to say something, but he waits without prompting.

“Neil is lovely,” he says finally.  

“Yeah,” Andrew agrees.  

“He makes you really happy.”

 _Happy,_ Nicky says. It’s not a word Andrew had been familiar with before the last year, but he knows it now, even if he hadn’t been able to identify it before. Except ‘happy’ seems so small of a word, so minuscule in comparison to what Neil makes him feel. He doesn’t know if there is a word big enough for whatever it is he does.

“Yeah,” he agrees. Nicky says nothing in response, but Andrew suddenly finds himself wanting to explain, wanting some kind of solace.

“It’s only been a year,” he says. “And I already feel like I could spend the rest of my life with him. I felt it after the first week.”

“Hey,” Nicky says, so softly it almost doesn’t sound like him at all. “It’s scary, isn’t it? That’s how I felt with Erik, even after the first day. I thought it was just infatuation, especially because it was _me,_ you know? But the longer I spent with him the more I knew I couldn’t spend my life without him. Not in some unhealthy codependant way, because believe me I know the difference, but he made me happy, and made me feel like I deserved to be kind to myself." 

Andrew has always wanted to ask. This seems like the opportune time, and even though he’s not entirely sure how it fits into the conversation, he knows that somehow it does. “Who proposed first?”

Nicky hums. “Erik beat me to it. It took a long time to get over how I felt about myself, so this was before I was confident enough to ask.”

“Are you sure of yourself now?”

“Yeah,” Nicky says. “I mean, obviously not all the time, but it helps to know that I have a home where I belong, where I'm loved.”

And this also, it seems to be becoming a recurring theme in Andrew’s life. A home, not in some concrete place, but in a person. He’s always wanted to escape, to go away, to leave to some abstract, nameless place because it was the only way he knew to stop hurting. But now all he can think is that he isn’t hurting anymore, and that still he wants to make a home in Neil’s heart, to curl up in his chest and know the sound of his heartbeat like he knows his own.

And all he can think is that maybe he doesn’t even need to. Maybe he already has.

+

Andrew lifts the blanket as gently as he can, rolls into bed as gently as he can, and settles beside Neil as gently as he can, not wanting to wake him.

He fails. Neil rolls over and peeks at Andrew in the dark, his hands curled up by his face in between them.

“Go back to sleep,” Andrew tells him quietly. 

“Wasn’t sleeping," Neil says. "I was waiting for you.”

“What for?”

“To tell you something.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m quitting,” Neil says.

Andrew shifts so he can better look at Neil. “What?”

“I’m quitting,” Neil repeats.  

“I heard you. I mean why?”

“Because it was good for when I was too scared to stay in one place. But I’m not anymore. And I miss you all the time, even when I’m with you, especially when I’m away.”

“Okay,” Andrew agrees. “Okay,” he says again, and reaches out to Neil, who shifts closer to him, his pupils blown wide in the dark. Andrew presses his thumb to the corner of his lips and lets it slip just barely into his mouth before he kisses him.

Neil exhales into it, like he’d been holding his breath too long, presses closer so his chest is to Andrew’s and throws one leg over his, pulling away to ask if it’s okay, to which Andrew replies with a soft spoken 'yes' and by hooking a hand underneath his knee and pulling him closer.

“I miss you, too,” Andrew says against his lips, mumbling the words so they are almost incoherent, but that he knows Neil hears anyway by the hitch in his breath. “All the time,” he says, and the words don’t make him afraid like they would have a year ago.

Neil presses his lips to his eyelids and forehead and nose and lips, to the spatter of freckles on his collarbone and the space where his jaw meets his neck.

And Andrew holds him close, his hand pressed over Neil’s beating heart, his home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you again ily!!! xxx

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading ik this was questionably written at times but i love you and that's all that matters 
> 
> i might write a few extras if ya'll are into that but lemme know! thank you so much again <3 
> 
> p.s. if ur reading ghost story it's been put on hold for just a bit while i get adjusted to the college life but i promise i'm working on the finaleeee


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